stranger on the net

A sweeping tragedy from ancient Korea. Beautifully brought to the silver screen by Kim Young-jun it tells the story of the love that couldn\’t be between the lowly Jinha (Shin Hyun-june) and the concubines daughter Sullie (Kim Hee-sun). It\’s more action oriented than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and more \”modern\”, mixing techno and rock music into the soundtrack and having tighter editing and even more fantasy aspects. Very good, 4/5.

Sullie meets Jinha in the woods as children, were Jinha saves her from a ravaging dog with his three sword. They grow up together, him a lowly parentless peasant, her a lovely daughter from a war lords concubine. When Sullies mother dies, she is carried away by her father to be married off against her will. During this time, Jinha finds out that he is the lone descendent of the Yo family of the great old house of Ho; and that his family were killed for their secret Bichun art. Jinha masters the Bichun art and sets out after Sullie, to find her on the verge of marriage. They run off but are caught; and Jinha is seemingly killed, after finding out that Sullies father was behind the attack on his family.

It might come off as an all out action movie, but this movie is really a tragic love story. If you try to follow the story too hard you will fall off, it is after all a six volume epic comic crammed into a film just around 2 hours long. But if you kick back and enjoy it will sweep you along. Sure, some of the villains are unclear, and we don\’t know everything that goes on. But we do know that Jinha loves Sullie, Sullie loves Jinha, and their love can never be. And on top of this, everyone wants the Bichun secretes, and Jinha needs to avenge the murder of his parents.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 30th, 2002 at 23:00 and is filed under at the movies.